Renaissance
Vision

What makes a painting recognisably Renaissance?

This accessible introduction examines the visual changes that distinguished Renaissance art from much medieval European painting. It considers the renewed engagement with classical culture, the development of believable human figures and the creation of convincing three-dimensional space.

Rather than presenting the Renaissance as a simple stylistic formula, the film introduces a connected system of artistic decisions: anatomy, observation, perspective, proportion, composition and the relationship between human figures and their surroundings. It provides the essential foundation for the rest of this collection.

Piero della Francesca created paintings of extraordinary stillness, clarity and structural intelligence.

This National Gallery film examines an artist for whom painting, mathematics and geometry were closely connected. Piero’s figures possess a monumental calm, while architecture, landscape, light and carefully measured intervals establish a sense of visual order.

His work demonstrates that perspective is more than a device for making space appear realistic. It can shape the emotional and philosophical atmosphere of an image. Piero’s paintings feel rational and mysterious at the same time—a quality that continues to attract contemporary artists.

Raphael’s paintings appear effortless, but their harmony was achieved through exceptional control of drawing, composition, gesture and expression.

This film explores Raphael’s ability to organise complex groups of figures while preserving emotional intimacy and visual clarity. It considers the relationship between his preparatory thinking and the apparently natural unity of his finished paintings.

Raphael’s importance lies not only in technical refinement. His work helped establish an influential ideal of human beauty, dignity and emotional intelligence. His compositions became models for generations of artists working across painting, printmaking and decorative art.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is both a Renaissance portrait and a global cultural image.

This concise discussion looks beyond the painting’s celebrity to examine Leonardo’s artistic decisions. The figure’s pose, gaze, expression and relationship with the imagined landscape created a new kind of psychological presence. Gradual transitions between light and shadow soften the boundaries of the face and contribute to its famous ambiguity.

The film also raises a larger question: how does an individual work of art acquire meanings that extend far beyond its original setting, patron and historical moment?

Titian’s paintings reveal an artist who continued to rethink an image while he worked.

Using The Tribute Money and evidence obtained through technical examination, National Gallery restorer Jill Dunkerton explains how alterations concealed beneath the visible surface reveal Titian’s decisions. These discoveries challenge the assumption that a masterpiece must emerge from the flawless execution of a completely settled plan.

The film presents painting as an evolving conversation between intention, material and discovery. Its short running time makes it an effective introduction to the more detailed technical films later in the collection.

A pigment does not determine the appearance of a colour on its own. Its binder, application and relationship with the surface can transform its visual effect.

This National Gallery demonstration compares green pigments prepared with egg tempera and oil. The film shows how different painting systems affect transparency, opacity, saturation, texture and the way light moves through or reflects from a layer of colour.

It offers a practical reminder that colour is a material event, not merely a selection from a palette. The visual character of a painted surface emerges from the interaction of pigment, medium, technique and light.

Gold in historical painting was never simply a decorative colour.

This film demonstrates methods used to apply and manipulate gold in works associated with artists such as Duccio and Andrea Mantegna. It considers how artists prepared surfaces, attached gold leaf and created patterned or reflective effects.

Gold could suggest sacred illumination, status, preciousness or a reality beyond ordinary physical space. Its appearance also changes as the viewer and surrounding light move. The material therefore participates actively in the experience of the artwork rather than functioning as a passive background.

The Renaissance was shaped by artistic exchange across regions, trade networks and cultures.

This film examines Hugo van der Goes’s monumental Portinari Altarpiece, commissioned for Florence but painted in the Netherlands. Its arrival introduced Florentine viewers to an astonishing level of surface detail, atmospheric observation and oil-painting technique.

The work complicates simplified accounts in which Renaissance innovation belongs only to Italy. It demonstrates how artists and patrons responded to ideas arriving from elsewhere—and how encounters between different visual traditions can generate new creative possibilities.

Venetian Renaissance painting is celebrated for colour that appears rich, deep and alive.

In this specialist lecture, conservation scientist Barbara Berrie investigates Venetian colour as a material construction. Pigments, binders, translucent layers and the optical interaction of different substances all contributed to effects that cannot be understood through colour names alone.

The presentation offers a deeper technical counterpart to the collection’s shorter films. It encourages artists and viewers to think about colour as accumulated physical structure: something built through successive decisions about materials, thickness, transparency and reflected light.

Every finished painting contains a history that cannot be seen with the unaided eye.

This presentation introduces imaging methods used to investigate paintings without damaging them. Technical examination can reveal preparatory drawing, altered figures, changes in composition and the distribution of pigments and binders. An Early Renaissance painting by Cosimo Tura provides one of the film’s important case studies.

The technologies do more than solve historical mysteries. They allow viewers to encounter painting as a sequence of decisions, revisions and material transformations—and to recognise the finished surface as only one layer of an artwork’s story.